Several
friends have told me over the past few years, “Bill, someday your ridiculous
case will be overturned by the courts and you will be vindicated.” To
each of those friends I have responded, “When that happens, you can rest
assured that The Oregonian will not run a headline saying: Sizemore
Vindicated. Their headline will say: Like O.J. Simpson, Sizemore
Gets Off.

Thanks
to The Oregonian for being so predictable. After the news broke
this week that the Court of Appeals had overturned the personal judgment
against me, The Oregonian opened their editorial
with a comparison to me and OJ. Simpson, ignoring the distinction
that O.J. was found by a jury to owe millions for murdering two innocent
people, and simply didn’t pay, while in my case the court said I don’t
owe the teachers union any money.

Truth
is, last week’s decision in my favor by the Oregon
Court of Appeals did not vindicate me. The court simply concluded
that there was no legal basis for holding me personally liable for the
judgment against Oregon Taxpayers United. That’s the news, folks, but
as Paul Harvey says, “Here’s the rest of the story.”

The
Oregonian’s editorial stated, “…a jury found that Sizemore and his crew
engaged in a ‘calculated course of criminal conduct’ and ‘cynical, criminal
manipulation of the democratic process’.” That statement is patently false.
The jury did not find that or make any such statement. Multnomah County
Circuit Court Judge Jerome LaBarre made that statement after the trial
was over. Remember, however, that the jury, not Judge LaBarre, was the
fact finder in our case. Moreover, of all people involved in our case,
Judge Jerome LaBarre has no right to claim any moral high ground.

Judge
Jerome LaBarre presided over the OEA v. Oregon Taxpayers United case for
three long years. The entire time, the judge concealed from everyone the
fact that his own son was a member and activist in the same union that
was suing us in his courtroom. Only when his son was elected president
of his local and the secret could no longer be kept, did Judge LaBarre
confess his three-year conflict of interest and resign from the case.
That was after three years of manipulating our case so that his son’s
union won at every turn.

Where
was The Oregonian’s editorial criticizing Judge LaBarre’s reprehensible
conduct? They knew about his conflict of interest, but instead of reporting
it, told me the fact didn’t seem newsworthy to them.

During
the trial, Judge LaBarre suppressed evidence that would have made it impossible
for our jury of fourteen Democrats and one Green Party member to have
found against us. Then, at the end of the trial, he and the unions formulated
jury instructions that made it all but impossible for the jury not to
find against us. The entire trial was orchestrated to reach a predetermined
conclusion and the Portland media gave them all the cover they needed
to pull it off.

For
example, the public has been led by news coverage of the trial to believe
that I engaged in a pattern of forgeries to get measures on the ballot.
Here’s the fact: We submitted approximately 266,000 signatures on the
two measures over which the unions sued us. The total number of forgeries
that were presented to the jury was less than 30, less than one-thousandth
of one percent of the whole. Two employees, Becky Miller and Kelli Highley,
admitted that indeed they had forged a handful of signatures (12 to 14
each) on the two petitions, and both stated under oath that I neither
knew of nor authorized their actions.

I have
never forged signatures, told anyone else to, or knowingly looked the
other way while someone else did. In fact, I have turned in for prosecution
dozens of circulators, who we caught forging signatures. As for the other
charges against OTU, never in this country have such legally absurd claims
ever even gone to trial. Who ever heard of a political entity suing a
political opponent for all of their campaign money back tripled, because
the other side’s tax returns were allegedly inaccurate?

Anyone
with any knowledge of Oregon politics knows exactly what is going on in
this case. The teachers union got tired of spending millions of dollars
every election fighting my pro-taxpayer measures, which have saved Oregon
taxpayers billions of dollars, and decided to sue me out of politics.
They sued me in liberal Multnomah County, tossed all of the Republicans
out of the jury pool, and got a judge whose son was an activist in their
own union. Low and behold, with that stacked deck they won a multi-million
judgment for which I personally was held liable, even though I was not
a party to the case and never had a trial. Talk about a miscarriage of
justice.

Some
months ago, the unions showed their hand when they offered to not pursue
me for the $4.5 million I owed them, if I would simply agree to drop my
appeal and stay out of politics for 15 years. I rejected their offer,
which was nothing short of legal blackmail, and last week saw the judgment
tossed by the court of appeals.

In the
final analysis, here’s my sin: I have placed measures on the ballot that
have given Oregonians the opportunity to decide for themselves what kind
of government they want and how much taxes they want to pay? That’s it.
So, why is it so important to so many on the left side of Oregon’s political
spectrum that voters not be given those choices? What’s wrong with letting
the people vote?

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Apparently,
it’s a big enough deal to throw out the legal rulebook and journalistic
ethics in an all-out effort to bury the guy who puts the measures on the
ballot that gives the voters all of those choices. Well, so far their
plan hasn’t worked. At any rate, thanks to the Oregon Court of Appeals
for getting this one right.

Bill Sizemore is a registered Independent who
works as executive director of the Oregon Taxpayers Union, a statewide
taxpayer organization. Bill was the Republican candidate for governor
in 1998. He and his wife Cindy have four children, ages eight to thirteen,
and live on 36 acres in Beavercreek, just southeast of Oregon City, Oregon.

Bill Sizemore is considered one of the foremost experts on the initiative
process in the nation, having placed dozens of measures on the statewide
ballot. Bill was raised in the logging communities of the Olympic Peninsula
of Washington state, and moved to Portland in 1972. He is a graduate of
Portland Bible College, where he taught for two years. A regular contributing
writer to www.NewsWithViews.com.

Judge
Jerome LaBarre presided over the OEA v. Oregon Taxpayers United case for
three long years. The entire time, the judge concealed from everyone the
fact that his own son was a member and activist in the same union that
was suing us in his courtroom.